stevenmorrish’s review:

This review reportedly contains spoilers.

I'm a bit of a sucker for found footage movies. Love The Blair Witch Project, like Troll Hunter, massive fan of Cloverfield. When Chronicle snuck up in the schedule (I knew hardly anything about it until I saw the trailer about three days before I saw the movie), I had visions of it being movie of the year. It looked excellent. And while it is a great movie, it was slightly less than I was expecting maybe.

It's not quite a "found footage" movie like the others listed, it doesn't just use one camera, but a whole host of cameras, security footage, news footage, all pieced together in chronological order to create the story. I think that's what let it down a bit for me, I would have perfered it all to be from Andrews camera, and especially as seeing how he could use his new powers to make the camera film without him holding it, allowing it to be a fourth character. The only other slight problem I have with the movie is that the source of their powers is never touched upon. It's just there. They find a hole, go in, get powers. I liked that there was no backstory in Cloverfield (apart from a clever clue at the end), but here I found it a little irritating, as they touched on it, and then never went back, other than to find the hole buried.

Most of the movie is brilliant, though. When the lads first get their powers it's a bit like American Pie meets You've Been Framed, as they have a great laughing going round playing tricks on people, looking up girls skirts, and generally just being childish. As their powers grow, however, the movie (and Andrew in particular) gets darker. There are some superb scenes, most notably their first flight (interrupted by the best on-screen airplane since Knowing). Characters die. And it gets progressively darker, which comes as a bit of a shock contrasting with the earlier jokey tone.

I don't really get the ending, think it could have ended much stronger, but the climactic scenes prior to the tag are brilliantly shot. Definitely worth seeing.